Conservation groups launch Cross River Gorilla Alliance to halt decline, empower communities.

The information was unveiled on April 30. It brought together at least eight groups including CEPOW Cameroon, AJESH Cameroon, SEKAKHO Cameroon, SURUDEV Cameroon, CRIMAD Cameroon, CBMM Cameroon, MEGWAH Cameroon, ERuDeF Cameroon and Nigeria and the African Conservation Foundation, UK.

The Cross River Gorilla (Gorilla gorilla diehli), found only in the fragmented forests along the Cameroon-Nigeria border, has been steadily declining due to habitat loss, poaching, and fragmentation. 

With fewer than 300 of them estimated to remain, conservationists warn that without urgent intervention, the species could disappear within 20 to 30 years.

Speaking at the launch, Nkembi Louis, Chief Executive Officer of ERuDeF, painted a sobering picture while outlining a hopeful roadmap. 

“The Cross River Gorillas... have been declining. These animals mean a lot to the conservation community and locals, but we see them disappearing. By 2050, we should be having the population of Cross River Gorillas moving from 300 to thousands,” he said.

The Alliance brings together community-based organisations and local groups from Cameroon’s North West and South West Regions, with the governments of Cameroon and Nigeria, international partners, and the scientific community, to create a unified, consensus-based framework that complements rather than duplicates existing conservation efforts.

Focuses on community ownership

A central pillar of the Alliance is the full empowerment of local communities. The conservationists said the ongoing Anglophone crisis has severely restricted access by major international donors and groups to gorilla habitats, worsening the threat to the species. The solution, according to Nkembi, lies in leveraging trusted local actors.

“The only way to protect them is to use community-based conservation groups by creating networks and organising them to work together with the government. These are organisations and people who are known by the local population and the non-state armed groups,” Nkembi added.

The Alliance will support the formalisation of community groups into legal cooperatives and associations capable of attracting funding and developing enterprises.

Key strategies include creating and linking community forests to establish ecological corridors that allow gorillas to move between the 12 fragmented populations to reduce the risk of inbreeding and launching a major ecotourism programme to bring high-value visitors and generate significant revenue for local economic development. 

Also, the groups are committed to building the capacity of local organisations in governance, enterprise development, and conservation and sensitising indigenous communities to manage their environment and generate sustainable income, reducing long-term dependence on foreign funding.

“We cannot conserve with empty stomachs or continue depending on foreign funding,” Nkembi stressed, adding that “empowered communities will be able to continue conservation initiatives even when foreign funding dries up”. 

Alliance’s 2050 vision

The Alliance operates under a charter guided by four main principles: full involvement of community-based organisations, capacity building for local groups, complementing government and international efforts, and improving livelihoods of host communities.

By 2050, the initiative aims to achieve a stable, non-declining gorilla population exceeding 1,000 individuals, while the communities are expected to derive decent incomes from conservation-linked enterprises, particularly ecotourism and community forest management. 

Beyond 2050, the vision is a peaceful cohabitation where “gorillas and other protected species can become great drivers of economic empowerment, animals and humans in these communities should be cohabiting freely with each other and at peace”. 

Nkembi warned of the high stakes, noted that: “In the absence of poaching and deforestation, they will simply die off due to inbreeding and we will be losing natural heritage and billions of dollars. Wildlife is the source of the wealth of nations because killing them will result in every human dying”.

The formal launch followed a workshop that brought together community-led organisations from the North West and South West Regions, to unite efforts specifically for Cross River Gorilla protection. This grassroots convening is expected to serve as the operational backbone of the Alliance moving forward.

The Cross River Gorilla Alliance will run through 2050, with regular milestones to track population recovery, corridor establishment, community enterprise development, and livelihood improvements.

This article was first published in The Guardian Post Edition No:3781 of Wednesday May 06, 2026